(Continuing a series based on Dunbar’s book, “Friends”. You can find the basic thesis here: https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/09/18/introduction-to-friends-by-robin-dunbar/ )
Because of the fallenness of all humanity, there is an ongoing risk of people misusing their power and mistreating others. Whether it is physical or sexual abuse, financial exploitation, or emotional manipulation, everyone is potentially vulnerable to mistreatment, including by those who are our family and friends.
One way we try to avoid abuse is by not allowing anyone to get too close, keeping everyone at arm’s length. But being isolated is really bad for your health and life quality. And it actually makes you very vulnerable to any strong individual or group that chooses to bully you.
Page 136 [friendship] also creates a passive defence alliance against attacks by other members of your group. This passive form of defence is much more important than active coalitionary support. Merely seeing that you have a friend makes the rest of us cautious about harassing you in case we end up in trouble with your friend as well. Active coalitionary support only becomes necessary on the infrequent occasions when passive protection fails to do its job.
Having one strong friendship group provides some protection from the bully but leaves you vulnerable if bullying occurs by the group itself.
One might therefore imagine that being part of lots of groups is the best protection. However being part of lots of groups means you’re not deeply embedded in any of the friendship groups because of time limitations. So there are not many people who would sacrifice to stand with you and help you. “Being a social butterfly flitting from one friendship or activity group to another isn’t the same thing psychologically as having a few close friends with whom you spend most of your time.”
I suggest the best protection is to be part of a relatively small number of friendship groups but to be really imbedded in. For many people their family will provide one of their key friendship groups. If they attended a different church to the rest of their family they will already have two communities to be part of how much they could turn to if the other community became toxic. If you add in an “old friends” group (e.g. Uni friends), a “Christian ministry group” (e.g. workplace Christian Union or a Christians in Sports group), and/ or a longer term involvement in a local hobby group (e.g. cyclists, knitting) then you have three distinct groups. So if someone in one group is acting abusively, you can sense-check it with people outside the situation, and be assured of support from those friends if the group with the problem member(s) does not back you up.
With this model in mind, who should we be aware of as especially vulnerable to bullying or abuse?
1) People who become Christians from very troubled backgrounds are vulnerable. If their family is non-functional and their previous friendships were unhelpful then the church may be their entire community. So if something goes wrong at church they will be vulnerable. While there may be a stage where this is inevitable, this suggests that when people have converted from non-Christian and troubled backgrounds, we should, after some initial discipleship, be encouraging them to find community and friendship beyond the church. The zeal of the convert and the fact church feels like their safe place means they may put themselves in a position where they find it hard to stand up to abuse in a church context.
2) People (adults) whose family are in the same church as them. Where you attend a different church to your family, and both seem broadly healthy, you already have a significant safeguard against abuse emerging in either context. But if church and family coincide, if your parents, adult brothers and sisters, grandparents, and cousins are all in your church, then in effect you only have one social network. That can be lovely when it works well. But in terms of protection from abuse, your safeguards are much reduced. The more your family and extended family are in the church you attend, the more you need to cultivate friendships that are beyond both church and family in order to have perspective and help if something goes wrong. (It is of course normal for children to attend the same church as their parents while they are growing up!)
3) People who are employed by the church (and their family members). Here the issue is twofold. Firstly, those who work for the church tend to invest more of their time and relational capacity into church than the average member. So the church community can crowd out relationships beyond the church. And at the same time, the financial dependence on church (and hence church relationships) can lead to pressure not to rock the boat with concerns about mistreatment.
It is not possibly to totally remove all the risks. It is great when people with few real friends become followers of Jesus and make lots of friends in church. To avoid the risk of abuse by refusing friendships would be wrong. So would throwing adult children out of a church because of the risk factors of parents being involved. And the reason we pay people to work for churches is because we need more of their time and gifts than could reasonably be volunteered.
But there is a key way to reduce the risk of abuse- encourage people to have friendships and activities beyond the church. That might be other Christian organisations, or secular causes or clubs, or just hanging out with friends. And to do this we have to have realistic expectations of church involvement. The new convert might for a year or two throw themselves into church activity and grow a lot, but with time needs to be encouraged to have time for friendships beyond church. The church worker needs to know it is ok to have time off for reconnecting with family or friends.
For many churches, this will mean running less programs. Rather than running large numbers of outreach programs and events, we want people to have time to connect to people as friends, benefitting themselves from these real friendships beyond the church as well as praying for these friends to know Jesus.
Jots and Scribbles 